Tree Talk is a platform to explore and discover locally sourced environmental science, creative calls-to-action, and fun ideas for growing a more vibrant community.

Goals

Tree Talk supports three primary actions:

• Exploration (“how do I find out more?”)
• Discovery (“what’s happening around my area?”)
• Contribution (“how can I get involved?”)

Actions

These actions are grouped into three contexts - Connect, Create, and Conserve:

• Connect facilitates exploration, discovery, and contribution to locally sourced environmental science and data
• Create facilitates exploration, discovery, and contribution to creative calls-to-action and events
• Conserve facilitates exploration, discovery, and contribution to a library of ways to personally track behavior change and contribute to a more vibrant, verdant community

Principles

The app will be designed and developed following four principles:

• Based in place: grounded in physical space and local communities, focused on geospatial awareness
• Diverse by nature: inspired by nature, designed for inclusion, accessible to everyone
• Real, simple: actively meet users where they are, highlight everyday actions
• Connected, relevant: support pre-existing community networks and goals, integrate proven standards and metrics

Users

All community members are potential users of Tree Talk! The app has two primary groups of users, catalysts and creators.

• Catalysts are community members who use the app more to explore and discover than to actively contribute. Catalysts regularly view events, follow projects, track their conservation actions, and just generally use the app.
• Creators contribute data and art, host events, actively create and own projects, and support environmental initiatives.

Views

The web app will have four primary views - Details, Map, Mosaic, and Social:

• The Detail view provides functionality for creating, reading, updating, and removing items within each of the core actions (Connect, Create, and Conserve)
• The Map view provides a way to access items based on their location. Selecting an item through the Map view brings up the item’s Detail view.
• The Mosaic view provides a way to access items based on a sortable and filterable grid of thumbnail images for all items within the filter. Selecting an item through the Mosaic view brings up the item’s Detail view.
• The Social view displays a Twitter embed filtered on the #treetalk hashtag, combined with core-action modifiers, e.g., “#treetalk #connect”, “#treetalk #create”, or “#treetalk #conserve”

Development

We’ll focus app development and tool selection on the modern web and its evolving options, tools, and processes, e.g., a progressive web app built with React+friends and TDD. For mapping, we’ll use Mapbox or a similar WebGL-powered tool (ArcGIS Online, Leaflet, OpenLayers) for awesome mobile-friendly map experiences.

Starting out, Connect data will draw primarily from the iNaturalist API and Create data will draw primarily from the Meetup API. We’ll use Open Street Map for storing relevant spatial data. We’ll develop the project in the open here on GitHub using the opensource.guides for best practices.